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Good and bad
Jan. 27th, 2014 04:48 amWhat the ever loving shit happened today yesterday? Something super awesome happened and then was immediately overshadowed by stupid, petty drama.
The backstory:
A few days ago the hospital let it be known that sometime this week (probably), Ari would be transferred to a rehab facility in Mt. P. Ari's grandmother began trying to plot a way to have her transferred to a facility in either Atlanta or DC because they're allegedly much better. (To be fair, they probably are good.) Thing is, if she did cross state lines, she'd be without her safety net of family and friends. In DC it would be mostly her grandmother and possibly her uncle. In Atlanta it would just be her mother. ("And D could visit on the weekends.")
My immediate reaction was, "That's fucking stupid. The trade off wouldn't be worth it unless this place is known for miracles." It's not. D is on record as saying no to the DC thing so I'm betting he also said no to Atlanta, but hey. Thing is, her mother sends out this LONG email about how good these places are and how she totally thinks it would be a good idea even though D doesn't seem to share this view. Naturally D doesn't get a copy. Shocker, I know.
But D has final say.
Then Saturday, her mother talks to a doctor who backs up the, "No, moving her to one of those facilities would be pointless. She needs her family around her now." train of thought. And then doc warns her that maybe this is as good as Ari will be, considering she's not moving her limbs on her own (anymore?) and not swallowing, or obeying commands.
This is presented as a worst case kind of deal but still, I can totally understand why it would break her mother to hear this.
That said, it doesn't excuse the rest of the email where she throws her daughter under the bus and sets that sucker ablaze, all while wanting a parade hosted by the world's tiniest violin.
She points out that back in October she told A to get a feeding tube, that her doctor friend suggested it. But Ari was afraid and didn't want to, and I guess the doctor saw enough improvement to not push it.
Then she lets out a secret that I'm not sure anyone else on the list of people she CC'd in on said email knew. A is incredibly private (gee, I wonder how that happened) and I guarantee that she will be horrified to know that her mother blabbed this secret. :(
Then she goes on and on about how hard SHE'S had it, being at the hospital and all the doctor appointments and basically wanting a goddamned parade in her honor for being there. Then she reverts to blaming Ari for being in this mess, and then circles around to saying she doesn't want anyone's pity (she just wants them to tell her how awesome she is, clearly) and if anyone doesn't like how she's handling things, they can email her because she's just too frayed to deal with anyone in person/over the phone.
Cass, who spent the previous night in the hospital, wakes up to this and calls me to get a second opinion. Once I hear the whole thing, I go from being a bit sympathetic (she's hearing her daughter might be kind of stuck in limbo for the rest of her life, of course she'll be shaken) to wanting to throttle her for reasons I trust you all understand.
With that said, Cass sends me a text yesterday morning asking if I want to go with her to the hospital in a little bit. I agree and off we go half an hour later.
We get there and her stepfather is there. He eventually leaves after telling us three things to pass along to her mother when she finally gets in. After the room is cleaned, one of the nurses (techs?) mentions that the trach she's got will let her talk if she covers the purple part (I think? I hadn't slept since Saturday evening so I wasn't following completely). As soon as she says this, Ari's right hand starts moving towards her throat.
Throughout our hour-long visit, she visibly swallows at least three times (I remember being shocked the first time I noticed because her mother had made a huge deal over how big a deal it was that she wasn't/wouldn't swallow), and when Cass starts talking about Ari's dog, she brightens. Then Cass mentions D and I swear this part is true, no matter who doesn't believe me:
Ari mouths something while her hand is trying to reach her throat. She tried to or actually said something only we couldn't hear what it was. This was after she made quite a few faces that looked like she was trying to figure out how to speak or convey something. While Cass was trying to see if Ari wanted her to call D, their mother appears and suddenly Ari, who was only moments before starting to seem like she was struggling to break through, shuts down.
Their mother sweeps in and kind of bulldozes over us (nothing new) but Cass stands firm (politely) and informs her that Ari was trying to say something and I back her up, foolishly thinking HEY. This person you were afraid people would be writing off? She's fighting to come back. She is so clearly there, and clearly getting frustrated by her inability to communicate properly, that anyone who doesn't see that is NOT seeing the same person I am. And she was on the verge of maybe being able to communicate or at least show you that she's one step closer!
Point is, she's moving both arms/hands, she's swallowing, and she's trying to speak.
Cass says she's gonna call D because Ari's doing something new and obviously wants him to appear. Mom says no, don't, because he was awake late due to work.
Did you miss the part about her trying to speak?
Cass, who didn't want to see her mother at all, gets a call and excuses herself, saying she needs to take the call and we're going. She tries to leave, but her mother follows her and they have a very quiet meeting where her mother asks why she's being so short with her. Cass tries to excuse herself one last time and when she's pushed, she says (not yells, nothing loud or showy) that she didn't appreciate the email blast wherein her mother sold her sister out. I don't even think she touched on the whole martyr bit, just the part where her mother told a secret that had no bearing on the situation at hand and then blamed Ari for winding up here. Her mother does the old, "I'm sorry you felt that way" thing and then this is where Cass stepped on a landmine that she should have learned back in middle school:
She foolishly said, "Well, I'm not the only one who feels that way." I don't know whether her mother acted/said she was the only one to have a problem with the email or if Cass volunteered that little tidbit first, but the point is, she named names on those who felt that maybe her mother was in the wrong.
As this is happening, I can't really overhear it but I'm 99% sure their pow-wow isn't a rundown of the things we'd been told as their stepfather left, so I get my four seconds of semi-alone time with Ari and point out that I adore her but none of us are psychic so it might be prudent to try and push a little harder towards communication otherwise she's going to have people making assumptions about what she wants/needs, and at the very best, she's going to wind up watching a lot of stupid youtube videos.
Which sounds serious, but it wasn't. And then I offered to tell her my random act of kindness story next time.
Cass and I went outside where she tried calling her grandmother to tell her about Ari's trying to speak/swallowing/doing miles better than we'd been led to believe.
I really, really wish she'd just jumped straight to calling D and skipped all the BS in between. But she didn't.
So her grandmother didn't answer (10am on a Sunday, not all that surprising) and then she tried her father, I guess. Why the hell he warranted a call before Ari's husband, I dunno. And all hell breaks loose because she's flipping out over the run in with her mother and then she gets a call from her uncle and that call is basically: WTF did you do, did you read the latest text from your mother, why would you antagonize her?
Text was long and ramble-y and terribly, terribly bitchy, but the gist was: Don't talk about me behind my back, if you don't agree with what I'm doing, keep it to yourself, and for the record, I've been here every day, every second (no) and I've given up so much for this, from various jobs (she's a seamstress/artist) to all my tiiiiiiiiiiiime, and this, this is how you lot repay me? Fine then, I'm turning off my phone and not updating ANYONE on Ari's health. Oh, and btw: Ari CANNOT swallow and most decidedly CANNOT TALK.
To which Cass bursts into tears because of course she was namechecked in this thing and now everyone is going to blame her for saying what they'd all been saying anyway.
She calls her father again and he consents to read the texts (like I said, they went out to just about everyone in the family) and will call her back.
Tears, man. Tears. I don't fucking understand how anyone can be twisting this to make it all about them when there was this incredibly good thing that happened and NO ONE GIVES A DAMN.
When Cass is a little better, she has me call D. (That's right, folks, it took another half an hour before he was alerted to the fact that his wife was on the verge of talking! What the ever loving shit?) I do and apparently scare the hell out of him because my phone shows up as Ari's number? Guess that means I'm not in his phone either (any time I put him in my phone, the phone deletes his number eventually). Oops.
I feel very weird being in the middle of this, so I start by asking if Ari'd been talking before? Or, if not talking really, at least making motions like she was trying to? And he says noooooo... So I tell him that she was doing that this morning, not that long ago, and give him a really quick version that skips the "and then your mother in law showed up and shit went south both for your wife and for everyone else breathing" and end with, "She seemed really excited about the prospect of you so we thought you should know." Then I stepped on an itty bitty landmine when I mentioned that there was a bit of a war going on (not having any intention of going into it beyond, "and with that going on, I wasn't sure you'd get the part about her moving her arms/swallowing on her own") and I get shut down with, "no. No war. Nope." Okay? You want to ban WWIII going on in there, that is just fine with me, but I really think you're supposed to know- "Nothing against you, but there is no war, no drama, none. If there is, and it's in that room..."
Um, kay? So I spit out what I was trying to say and he says he'll be there in twenty minutes or so and maybe thanks me, I dunno, and that's that. (Just realized, maybe he thought I was joining the camp of people who've been bitching about him not being there enough? But I would hope that he'd realize I wouldn't agree with that and I wouldn't criticize him like that. It wasn't a "where are you" call, it was "OHMYGLOB, did you know she can do this? Because she is! It's the best thing ever and oh yeah, mind the landmines, sir!" thing.) I get off the phone and seriously want to burst into tears because I feel like I just got scolded for something. That on top of Ari's mother basically telling everyone she could find in her phone not to listen to the crazy notions of people saying Ari can even attempt to talk or do anything she didn't personally see?
WTF, mate?
We go out and visit another of Cassy's friends whom I've never met but she seems nice, and Cass's phone dies so she has to get it reset and loses just about everything and it takes forever and we rehash this stupid event over and over for the rest of the day because things keep piling up. (Her father going on the warpath for one.)
She rehashes it over and over when we get here (her husband is trying to fix our truck but that's at least another three days away from completion) and I never actually get to tell my side or at least the part where I got to feel like crap because really, what's the point? You hear the story 57 times already, you're gonna tune out.
I suppose in the grand scheme of things the call with D wasn't awful, it was just awkward, but it still felt awful. You try and give someone good news and tiptoe around the bad and it's still being overshadowed by stupid crap.
I don't get why her mother is dismissing the improvements as not possible when it's just that she hasn't seen them yet (and since they're a new thing of course she hasn't!) except... it comes across as less, "Don't want to get my hopes up until I have proof this happened" and more, "It didn't happen for MEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEME, so it didn't happen." Are you that petty? Jesus, you'd think they'd be alternating Cass and D in there as much as possible since they're the two she responds to most of all. If she's responding to someone and making an effort when they're around, you don't scare them off. You accept you are not the chosen snowflake yet (maybe you were before, maybe you will be again, maybe the most you'll get is a wave like me) and you get the fuck over yourself so that she can get better, especially when the docs seem concerned that she's not further along in ways that someone else is prompting her to actually be further along. JESUS. It's not that difficult to understand!
Feel bad about it on your own time, but get over yourself and accept that in this moment in time, you're back in the background with the rest of us and let someone else help the person you love. It's not about you.
Tl;dr version: Ari tried to speak, is moving (both sides, despite reports to the contrary) and swallowing on her own but the former is the most important bit. This is all overshadowed by family drama and I feel like the only person who is excited by this development... partly due to the fact that no one seems to believe it actually happened.
The backstory:
A few days ago the hospital let it be known that sometime this week (probably), Ari would be transferred to a rehab facility in Mt. P. Ari's grandmother began trying to plot a way to have her transferred to a facility in either Atlanta or DC because they're allegedly much better. (To be fair, they probably are good.) Thing is, if she did cross state lines, she'd be without her safety net of family and friends. In DC it would be mostly her grandmother and possibly her uncle. In Atlanta it would just be her mother. ("And D could visit on the weekends.")
My immediate reaction was, "That's fucking stupid. The trade off wouldn't be worth it unless this place is known for miracles." It's not. D is on record as saying no to the DC thing so I'm betting he also said no to Atlanta, but hey. Thing is, her mother sends out this LONG email about how good these places are and how she totally thinks it would be a good idea even though D doesn't seem to share this view. Naturally D doesn't get a copy. Shocker, I know.
But D has final say.
Then Saturday, her mother talks to a doctor who backs up the, "No, moving her to one of those facilities would be pointless. She needs her family around her now." train of thought. And then doc warns her that maybe this is as good as Ari will be, considering she's not moving her limbs on her own (anymore?) and not swallowing, or obeying commands.
This is presented as a worst case kind of deal but still, I can totally understand why it would break her mother to hear this.
That said, it doesn't excuse the rest of the email where she throws her daughter under the bus and sets that sucker ablaze, all while wanting a parade hosted by the world's tiniest violin.
She points out that back in October she told A to get a feeding tube, that her doctor friend suggested it. But Ari was afraid and didn't want to, and I guess the doctor saw enough improvement to not push it.
Then she lets out a secret that I'm not sure anyone else on the list of people she CC'd in on said email knew. A is incredibly private (gee, I wonder how that happened) and I guarantee that she will be horrified to know that her mother blabbed this secret. :(
Then she goes on and on about how hard SHE'S had it, being at the hospital and all the doctor appointments and basically wanting a goddamned parade in her honor for being there. Then she reverts to blaming Ari for being in this mess, and then circles around to saying she doesn't want anyone's pity (she just wants them to tell her how awesome she is, clearly) and if anyone doesn't like how she's handling things, they can email her because she's just too frayed to deal with anyone in person/over the phone.
Cass, who spent the previous night in the hospital, wakes up to this and calls me to get a second opinion. Once I hear the whole thing, I go from being a bit sympathetic (she's hearing her daughter might be kind of stuck in limbo for the rest of her life, of course she'll be shaken) to wanting to throttle her for reasons I trust you all understand.
With that said, Cass sends me a text yesterday morning asking if I want to go with her to the hospital in a little bit. I agree and off we go half an hour later.
We get there and her stepfather is there. He eventually leaves after telling us three things to pass along to her mother when she finally gets in. After the room is cleaned, one of the nurses (techs?) mentions that the trach she's got will let her talk if she covers the purple part (I think? I hadn't slept since Saturday evening so I wasn't following completely). As soon as she says this, Ari's right hand starts moving towards her throat.
Throughout our hour-long visit, she visibly swallows at least three times (I remember being shocked the first time I noticed because her mother had made a huge deal over how big a deal it was that she wasn't/wouldn't swallow), and when Cass starts talking about Ari's dog, she brightens. Then Cass mentions D and I swear this part is true, no matter who doesn't believe me:
Ari mouths something while her hand is trying to reach her throat. She tried to or actually said something only we couldn't hear what it was. This was after she made quite a few faces that looked like she was trying to figure out how to speak or convey something. While Cass was trying to see if Ari wanted her to call D, their mother appears and suddenly Ari, who was only moments before starting to seem like she was struggling to break through, shuts down.
Their mother sweeps in and kind of bulldozes over us (nothing new) but Cass stands firm (politely) and informs her that Ari was trying to say something and I back her up, foolishly thinking HEY. This person you were afraid people would be writing off? She's fighting to come back. She is so clearly there, and clearly getting frustrated by her inability to communicate properly, that anyone who doesn't see that is NOT seeing the same person I am. And she was on the verge of maybe being able to communicate or at least show you that she's one step closer!
Point is, she's moving both arms/hands, she's swallowing, and she's trying to speak.
Cass says she's gonna call D because Ari's doing something new and obviously wants him to appear. Mom says no, don't, because he was awake late due to work.
Did you miss the part about her trying to speak?
Cass, who didn't want to see her mother at all, gets a call and excuses herself, saying she needs to take the call and we're going. She tries to leave, but her mother follows her and they have a very quiet meeting where her mother asks why she's being so short with her. Cass tries to excuse herself one last time and when she's pushed, she says (not yells, nothing loud or showy) that she didn't appreciate the email blast wherein her mother sold her sister out. I don't even think she touched on the whole martyr bit, just the part where her mother told a secret that had no bearing on the situation at hand and then blamed Ari for winding up here. Her mother does the old, "I'm sorry you felt that way" thing and then this is where Cass stepped on a landmine that she should have learned back in middle school:
She foolishly said, "Well, I'm not the only one who feels that way." I don't know whether her mother acted/said she was the only one to have a problem with the email or if Cass volunteered that little tidbit first, but the point is, she named names on those who felt that maybe her mother was in the wrong.
As this is happening, I can't really overhear it but I'm 99% sure their pow-wow isn't a rundown of the things we'd been told as their stepfather left, so I get my four seconds of semi-alone time with Ari and point out that I adore her but none of us are psychic so it might be prudent to try and push a little harder towards communication otherwise she's going to have people making assumptions about what she wants/needs, and at the very best, she's going to wind up watching a lot of stupid youtube videos.
Which sounds serious, but it wasn't. And then I offered to tell her my random act of kindness story next time.
Cass and I went outside where she tried calling her grandmother to tell her about Ari's trying to speak/swallowing/doing miles better than we'd been led to believe.
I really, really wish she'd just jumped straight to calling D and skipped all the BS in between. But she didn't.
So her grandmother didn't answer (10am on a Sunday, not all that surprising) and then she tried her father, I guess. Why the hell he warranted a call before Ari's husband, I dunno. And all hell breaks loose because she's flipping out over the run in with her mother and then she gets a call from her uncle and that call is basically: WTF did you do, did you read the latest text from your mother, why would you antagonize her?
Text was long and ramble-y and terribly, terribly bitchy, but the gist was: Don't talk about me behind my back, if you don't agree with what I'm doing, keep it to yourself, and for the record, I've been here every day, every second (no) and I've given up so much for this, from various jobs (she's a seamstress/artist) to all my tiiiiiiiiiiiime, and this, this is how you lot repay me? Fine then, I'm turning off my phone and not updating ANYONE on Ari's health. Oh, and btw: Ari CANNOT swallow and most decidedly CANNOT TALK.
To which Cass bursts into tears because of course she was namechecked in this thing and now everyone is going to blame her for saying what they'd all been saying anyway.
She calls her father again and he consents to read the texts (like I said, they went out to just about everyone in the family) and will call her back.
Tears, man. Tears. I don't fucking understand how anyone can be twisting this to make it all about them when there was this incredibly good thing that happened and NO ONE GIVES A DAMN.
When Cass is a little better, she has me call D. (That's right, folks, it took another half an hour before he was alerted to the fact that his wife was on the verge of talking! What the ever loving shit?) I do and apparently scare the hell out of him because my phone shows up as Ari's number? Guess that means I'm not in his phone either (any time I put him in my phone, the phone deletes his number eventually). Oops.
I feel very weird being in the middle of this, so I start by asking if Ari'd been talking before? Or, if not talking really, at least making motions like she was trying to? And he says noooooo... So I tell him that she was doing that this morning, not that long ago, and give him a really quick version that skips the "and then your mother in law showed up and shit went south both for your wife and for everyone else breathing" and end with, "She seemed really excited about the prospect of you so we thought you should know." Then I stepped on an itty bitty landmine when I mentioned that there was a bit of a war going on (not having any intention of going into it beyond, "and with that going on, I wasn't sure you'd get the part about her moving her arms/swallowing on her own") and I get shut down with, "no. No war. Nope." Okay? You want to ban WWIII going on in there, that is just fine with me, but I really think you're supposed to know- "Nothing against you, but there is no war, no drama, none. If there is, and it's in that room..."
Um, kay? So I spit out what I was trying to say and he says he'll be there in twenty minutes or so and maybe thanks me, I dunno, and that's that. (Just realized, maybe he thought I was joining the camp of people who've been bitching about him not being there enough? But I would hope that he'd realize I wouldn't agree with that and I wouldn't criticize him like that. It wasn't a "where are you" call, it was "OHMYGLOB, did you know she can do this? Because she is! It's the best thing ever and oh yeah, mind the landmines, sir!" thing.) I get off the phone and seriously want to burst into tears because I feel like I just got scolded for something. That on top of Ari's mother basically telling everyone she could find in her phone not to listen to the crazy notions of people saying Ari can even attempt to talk or do anything she didn't personally see?
WTF, mate?
We go out and visit another of Cassy's friends whom I've never met but she seems nice, and Cass's phone dies so she has to get it reset and loses just about everything and it takes forever and we rehash this stupid event over and over for the rest of the day because things keep piling up. (Her father going on the warpath for one.)
She rehashes it over and over when we get here (her husband is trying to fix our truck but that's at least another three days away from completion) and I never actually get to tell my side or at least the part where I got to feel like crap because really, what's the point? You hear the story 57 times already, you're gonna tune out.
I suppose in the grand scheme of things the call with D wasn't awful, it was just awkward, but it still felt awful. You try and give someone good news and tiptoe around the bad and it's still being overshadowed by stupid crap.
I don't get why her mother is dismissing the improvements as not possible when it's just that she hasn't seen them yet (and since they're a new thing of course she hasn't!) except... it comes across as less, "Don't want to get my hopes up until I have proof this happened" and more, "It didn't happen for MEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEME, so it didn't happen." Are you that petty? Jesus, you'd think they'd be alternating Cass and D in there as much as possible since they're the two she responds to most of all. If she's responding to someone and making an effort when they're around, you don't scare them off. You accept you are not the chosen snowflake yet (maybe you were before, maybe you will be again, maybe the most you'll get is a wave like me) and you get the fuck over yourself so that she can get better, especially when the docs seem concerned that she's not further along in ways that someone else is prompting her to actually be further along. JESUS. It's not that difficult to understand!
Feel bad about it on your own time, but get over yourself and accept that in this moment in time, you're back in the background with the rest of us and let someone else help the person you love. It's not about you.
Tl;dr version: Ari tried to speak, is moving (both sides, despite reports to the contrary) and swallowing on her own but the former is the most important bit. This is all overshadowed by family drama and I feel like the only person who is excited by this development... partly due to the fact that no one seems to believe it actually happened.
